The Pinball Hall of Fame

The row of contemporary machines which are based on licensed properties most people recognize, sadly. When I think of CSI, I often think pinball!

Overdue Story Number Two on our recent trip to Las Vegas. Sorry ’bout that. As my excuse goes, life gets in the way plus Libby’s museum closing was a sad turn of events last weekend.

Meanwhile, here’s an attraction I think will endure because pinball, the forerunner of video games, remains viable despite there only being one major manufacturer. I’m a bit curious as to how the machines are distributed to the public after the Sharper Image folded.

The Pinball Hall of Fame is located on Tropicana Avenue, about a couple blocks West of the (soon to be former) Liberace Museum and due East of the Strip. Directions are on the site (link will be given below). The majority of the machines run. Don’t fret about those which aren’t functioning. The people working there are doing what they can to get them operational again and many of them are relatively old. Besides, the selection is diverse enough not to matter: PHF has pinball machines of all the major decades and numerous licensed models I remember well from my upbringing in Central IL (killing time at Zayres with Dad and Brian) through my early years in Austin (killing time with Doc at the incredibly smelly Le Fun).

Jeremy would this machine for obvious reasons. You can also win a free game three ways: match, a minimal score or a minimal number of runs. I pulled it off once.

Prices on the games are the same as they were back in their heydays: older machines tend to be five balls per game (usually called a “play”) at a quarter each (sometimes two plays). Obviously I went with the ones from the Sixties and Seventies, especially if I recognized them. The biggest discovery I made was seeing how small the flippers were in the earlier years, pretty hard to get any English on the ball with them. I already knew the scores were lower then; bumpers only awarded 10 points, 100 if lit, gates for 50, matches based upon the number in the “ones” column, etc. By the time I was old enough to play, matches were done through the outcome of the “tens” section and scores were up to five digits (nowadays they’re nine digits).

The hours I killed at Metropolis Comics playing Star Trek: 25th Anniversary while I failed to meet GDW's unrealistic deadlines! This is a great machine I miss.

Being a hall of fame, you will find small signs or placards giving a brief history about the pinball machine: the manufacturer, its age, how many were built, the artwork, where this particular one came from, what was reworked, etc. Sometimes, there’s a funny comment by the author like “notice how the girl in Domino appears to be wearing a Wonder Bread bag for a dress.”  Many have those new-fangled, weird black-and-white patterns taped to them (see below). Those patterns can be read by a smart-phone’s camera through QR Reader and it makes your device go to a Web page explaining more.

The Pinball Hall of Fame was my first encounter with this QR stuff. Now I'm seeing these patterns or references more often around Austin on flyers.

Besides pinball, the PHF contains videogames, primarily the early ones that started to change the composition of the Aladdin’s Castle, bowling alley and Skateland I used to hang out at. I still can’t get very far on the second stage of Tron but I’m better at Tempest than I remember.

This Superman machine was a tie-in for the cool 1978 Richard Donner movie and it was built by Atari which was unusual due to their videogames.

Of all the non-gambling/food attractions in Las Vegas, this was the only destination we went to twice and have every intention to hit every time we’re in town. The first time was right after Liberace due to the proximity followed by the following Friday evening; reliving those nights in Houston when my parents took me to the arcade. I strongly recommend checking PHF out, especially if you somehow ended up in Las Vegas and you don’t have the nerve to gamble. It’s certainly a family-friendly place and a bargain compared to other venues. I failed to spend the 20 bucks I put aside for playing for both visits and not 20 per trip, I managed to get the 20 to last because I won enough games to stretch it out. Try pulling off such a stunt at a blackjack table.

Lastly, PHF is a charity. All your quarters go toward keeping the lights on, repairing the equipment, covering the amenities (you know, TP for the bathroom) and preserving an old past time you just can’t easily find anymore. In Austin, the last great arcade on the Drag closed a couple years ago (Einstein’s, open until 4 AM) and these places are no longer fixtures in America’s malls. Sure, you can check out Chuck E. Cheese’s or D&B but the emphasis at those joints are ticket-dispensing stuff, rail shooters or racing simulators. I haven’t seen pinball at D&B in a decade and the last great one they had was South Park which I played at PHF (won a game too!). The difference was PHF’s installed the software or settings to allow the profanity.

Further details are here. If you do visit, tell the volunteers/employees I sent you. They’ll thank you and me for spreading the word. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to return.